Defining a Smart City
(This article was originally posted on June 28, 2017.)
As near as I can tell, there is no consensus or clarity around the definition of a Smart City. Why would a definition be important? It would be important because a clear definition would be the first step towards understanding the engineering requirements to build such a city.
The Wikipedia entry for smart city is –
A smart city is an urban development vision to integrate information and communication technology (ICT) and Internet of Things (IoT) technology in a secure fashion to manage a city's assets”… However, that “ due to the breadth of technologies that have been implemented under the smart city label, it is difficult to distill a precise definition of a smart city.
The lack of clarity may be seen in other discussions, blogs, and conferences where the discussions of “smartness” is usually defined on a qualitative scale, ranking one city against another along a number of categories. These rankings tend to be dependent on the subjective-ness of the survey or reviewer.
If there is no specific definition, how does one design a Smart City, or otherwise measure when a city has achieved a sufficient level of smartness to be consider a Smart City.
It is easier to find clear measurements of success when reviewing technologies that help create a higher ranking in a specific city category, say for example “Mobility”. The smart parking pilot project in San Francisco is a good example of a specific, smart technology for addressing a vexing problems for cities. This pilot project was started in 2011, and its evaluation in 2014 showed that the smart meters had reduced the search time for parking spaces by 43%, which in turn reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 30%. The project was also able to decrease its hourly rates at meters and garages by $0.11 & $0.42, respectively, while at the same time increasing total revenues by $1.9 million to the parking authority. The increase in total revenue came from a nearly 100% gain in the target occupancy rates of the parking spaces, as well as dynamic pricing schemes.
This smart parking pilot provides a quantitative example of how hardware and software can be used to solve a specific citywide problem, with demonstrable user and economic impacts. The question then becomes – does the additive benefit of multiple technology solutions to knotty problems surrounding the management of city services and assets yield a Smart City? And by extension, can we define a suite of technology solutions that when applied would turn that city into a Smart City?
Another approach to discovering what makes a the Smart City is to review the recent Smart City Challenge by The US Department of Transportation (DoT). This challenge awarded $50 million in funding to create Mobility solutions in the quest to build a Smart City. Seventy-eight cities participated in the process, and Columbus, OH was selected as the winner. Their proposal was outstanding in the breadth of technology applications that they seek to apply to their city. The scale and scope of their effort has led to an additional $400 M in matching private partnership funds and applications that they hope will turn Columbus into the testing ground for intelligent-transportation systems.
What I found striking about their proposal was the metric for success that was highlighted by the DoT. The city of Columbus’ number one desire was “to reduce infant mortality by 40 percent and to cut the health disparity gap in half by 2020”.
I will admit this created a bit of confusion for me. There is way more to unpack here than just information and communication technologies (or smart parking or on-demand mass transit via autonomous electric vehicles or rapid freight-hauling via truck platooning, etc.). Particularly when the city officials acknowledged the issues in the Linden neighborhood have little to do with any technological issue. From the Columbus, OH proposal –
Transit service is available in Linden along the Cleveland Avenue Corridor; however, facilities at bus stops are lacking, with extremely few shelters along existing bus routes. Intersections in the area are frequently ranked as unsafe, with three of the top 25 highest crash intersections in the Columbus Region located in Linden. Neighborhood residents report that existing shelters are often poorly lit and lack amenities. There are also many FMLM (first mile / last mile) challenges along the corridor: sidewalks are missing from many streets and the existing network is in poor condition; street lighting is often dim or missing; and, Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)-compliant facilities for travelers with disabilities are often inadequate or non-existent.
These basic infrastructure challenges suggest that while technological enhancements to mobility may help with the infant mortality challenges in this neighborhood, there exists a large possibility that the socio-economic issues in this underserved community may also have a lot to do with their struggles.
It appears then that success for these city leaders is not necessarily about the technology at all. The hope-for outcome reflects what the city leaders want their city to become - uplifting, empowering, and sustainable. In the case of their proposals, each technology implementation is hoped to be synthesized in a way that (somehow) leads to the accomplishment of a greater societal goal. In other words, the societal outcomes are to be greater than the sum of the technological parts, lifting the city closer to an envisioned social end-point.
The subject of a Smart City as described in these proposals (as well as in the other locations) appears to be as much about social engineering as it is technological engineering. Put differently for those engineers out there who are trying to come to grips with how to define or design a Smart City - one could say it is about the societal-desired User Experience.
The desire here appears to be for a re-designed city whose outcomes are as altering to the city living experience as the iPhone was to the mobile phone user experience. The iPhone altered our perception, and then Apple changed our entire use, of a mobile computing platform. I see city leaders trying to accomplish similar style goals with these Smart City initiatives, seeking to redefine the city experience via the creation of a city-as-a-platform.
So what started here as an engineering exercise appears to have become more of a societal one. Perhaps that is as it should be. Whether you chose to define a Smart City by its societal or technological results, the creation of a Smart City (or Connected City or City-as-a-Platform) is an inspiring goal, and I believe we will get there. I also believe that patience and humility may be required if we look to the iPhone for inspiration. Consider that Apple first started developing the Newton (Steve Jobs’ first mobile computing device) in 1987, and that the iPhone was not released until 20 years after the start on the Newton.
And beyond this need for the time and patient to complete the platform development, we still need to find the clarity of vision, and ability to execute, of a Steve Jobs & Apple combination to deliver this city of the future.